Trial's End
by Youth of Australia
Summary: The original ending to The Trial of a Time Lord by Eric Saward, adapted by me. R&R.
1. A Sticky End

_**Introduction:** In 1986, Doctor Who was not in a good way. It had been all but cancelled and then revived with fewer episodes, smaller budget and higher expectations. The production team, working in a last minute frenzy, managed to put together a season-long story entitled The Trial of a Time Lord. Disaster struck when the author of the last episode, Robert Holmes, died, leaving it unfinished. Script Editor Eric Saward completed the episode but refused to change a line of it, despite its bleak ending. When Producer John Nathan-Turner complained, Saward resigned and forbade the use of his script. A new ending was commissioned at the eleventh hour._

_This year I received the abandoned script by Eric Saward. To be honest, I don't think we lost much, but here is a novelization of it. Changes are made to dialogue, a few story ideas are clarified and the epilogue is entirely my invention, as I present the last story of the Colin Baker era..._

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based (at times loosely) on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter 1: _A Sticky End_

The Doctor stared at the document, eyes narrowed with suspicion. The paper it was composed of was rough between his fingertips and the ink that made up the words had hardened into a mass of coiling carapaces on the surface. But although the two spluttering candles should have provided his keen eyes more than enough light to read the writing on the document, it remained a very specific form of gibberish.

Old High Gallifreyan gibberish.

And, from those tedious lectures in legal studies by Borusa aeons ago, the Doctor knew enough that the document's contents were very important and distinctly unbreakable. Gallifrey was a place where contracts were less likely to be broken than the laws of temporal thermodynamics. Another reason he hated the place and had spent more time avoiding it than living there.

But now he was back - well, within Time Lord territory at least - and not of his own free will. His adventures throughout time and space had been barely tolerated by the leaders of his people, usually because it gave them an excuse to let him fix their own problems. He'd always known them to be hypocritical and decadent, no matter what President ruled or what legislation was released. And, when something is known from the start of childhood, it becomes a fact and difficult to get emotional about. His leaders were always corrupt; it seemed silly to get upset about that. Next he'd be raging at a sun for setting or the tide going out.

Then his leaders had done something unforgivable.

Not just by a pariah like the Doctor, but by the great time-locked unwashed, by the universe the Time Lords observed with a mixture of pity and boredom.

Their arrogant assumption that they were at the top of the food chain, by both evolution and technology, had cost them dearly. Their data bank of all the knowledge the Time Lords had, the vastest catalogue of information anywhere, everywhere, ever, had been broken into. Gigabytes of data had been copied and stolen by the Andromeda Theocracy, hiding out on twentieth century Earth. They had quite rightly believed that the planet and the events on that planet at that particular point in history were too important, that the Time Lords would not dare act once they discovered the truth.

But the Time Lords had.

They'd changed history, reshuffling it like a pack of cards and violating the Laws of Time. Yes, perhaps legality on Gallifrey wasn't as watertight as he'd assumed. Which drew his mind back to the baffling form that was held in his hands. He looked across the office at the figure that had handed it to him.

A large, rotund man in this declining years, dressed in a frock coat with a winged collar around which snaked a cravat. Perched on the nose of his moon-like face was a pair of half-framed spectacles, a quill pen tucked behind his left ear. The mahogany desk he sat at was equally drab, and the fussy, cramped office it stood in was either dark brown or grey. The table boasted a heap of similarly incomprehensible papers, a copious ledger and an inkstand were placed at mathematically sycophantic angles to each other.

The Doctor didn't fit into the office, a fact that would let him sleep at nights. Not only did the soulless, slavish obedience to order, procedure and bureaucracy chafe at the Time Lord's very soul; his clothes were the only splash of colour to be seen. Ironically, were it not for the patchwork of colours, his coat, waistcoat and watch chain would have made him look like he was dressing like the clerk before him - and only one clerk was needed. Which was odd, because there were too. At least.

The office boasted a door on either side of the desk. The one through which the Doctor had walked though - marked _Entrance By Appointment Only _- lead to an almost identical office, lacking only one candle and a branched hatstand for a raglan coat to appear the mirror image of the room the Doctor now stood in. Sitting at the other desk was a clerk almost identical to the one before the Time Lord, lacking only the spectacles to complete the picture. It was disturbing but not entirely unexpected.

Because neither the office he stood in, nor the one he had left, was real. The factory complex that contained both offices, made of anachronistic hi-tech vistani alloy walls, was not real either. And it stood to reason that the clerks, one junior and one senior 'Mr. Popplewick' were not real at all. The Doctor was standing, if indeed he was standing in reality, in the depths of the amplified panotropic computer net, a micro-universe that interfaced with the Matrix of the Time Lords itself. Was he walking through this world of unreal illusions, or was all this happening inside his skull?

He'd entered the Matrix in such a way before, and nearly died. In similar circumstances, trying to prove his innocence to his own people. Well, not quite. The last time he had been framed for murder, this time... well, he was guilty as charged. His only hope was to prove that what he had done hadn't been a crime. And before he could do that he had to deal with the elusive figure now hiding in the Matrix behind this landscape of Victorian squalor.

The Doctor glanced back at the document, and then at the Mr. Popplewick before him. 'What is it?' he asked the clerk with frosty politeness.

Mr. Popplewick was already looking back at his ledger. 'A consent form, sir,' the clerk replied absently. 'The corridors in this factory are very long and dark. Should you unexpectedly die, our blessed proprietor, Mr. J.J. Chambers, insists he inherit your remaining lives,' he explained in his clipped, precise manner.

The Doctor grimaced. The document in his hands hadn't suddenly made sense, but in the Matrix, it didn't have to. It just was. Nowadays, he wasn't a hundred per cent sure how many regenerative forms he had left to use, if any, but the fact remained that in this micro-universe, his very essence could be re-edited. He could walk in with six bodies to spare and leave without one.

Or could he? There was every possibility that signing the document wouldn't change a thing and this was just another boring humiliation cooked up by the mind currently running the Matrix world. Maybe that was the point, to see him worry over whether or not to take the risk that the form was genuine. Because it was entirely credible that it was bona fide.

'Obviously the Valeyard doesn't believe the High Council will honour their side of the bargain,' the Doctor announced. Vocalizing his thoughts helped remind him of the reality. The Time Lords had picked, ostensibly at random, a learned court prosecutor Valeyard to appear against him at a trial over the affair on the planets Ravalox and Thoros Beta. And now the trial was almost over, the Valeyard's identity had been revealed and he had fled into the Matrix. The Doctor had followed.

And so had Sabalom Glitz.

A pleasant psychopathic criminal from Salostaphos in the constellation of Andromeda, Glitz had unwittingly been instrumental in discovering the atrocities the Time Lords had committed to Earth and humanity to protect their secrets. An amiable, hirsute man with dark curly hair and neatly shorn beard, Glitz was dressed in a mixture of fashionable canvas and protective coverings. His leather mitten-clad hand grabbed the Doctor's wrist as he took the quill offered by Mr. Popplewick.

The Doctor was wondering why Mr. Popplewick had flinched from letting him take the quill from behind the clerk's ear when Glitz hissed, 'Sign that and you're a dead man!' His concern was genuine, and well deserved - a non-Time Lord mind in the Matrix could sink without trace and the Doctor was the only one able or willing to let him escape. Which, obviously, he couldn't do if he was dead.

'We're in the Valeyard's domain,' the Doctor reminded Glitz grimly. 'He can kill me any time he likes.' The Doctor placed the document on the table and wrote down the next words he spoke. 'I'll sign my remaining lives over to Mr. J.J. Chambers,' he announced and scribbled his signature with a flourish. 'Now,' the Time Lord continued, letting his exasperation show, 'can I see your proprietor?'

Mr. Popplewick reverently took the document and studied it intently. 'The waiting room is that way,' he said, not taking his dull eyes from the page, and waved towards the closed door marked _Waiting Room_. 'You will be summoned as soon as your signature has been verified,' the clerk explained, placing the signed form atop a pile and returning to his ledger. His two guests were suddenly and completely ignored.

The Doctor strode straight over to the door and grabbed the brass handle. Time was running out. A hand fell on his shoulder and he heard Glitz's borderline hysterical whisper. 'This is madness!'

'Not if it precipitates my meeting with the Valeyard,' the Doctor retorted, twisting the handle and pulling open the door to the waiting room of 'the Fantasy Factory'.

Grey daylight - a noticeable contrast with the foggy night outside the factory - sliced in through the doorway and low moaning wind washed forward around the Doctor. And then he realized the hand gripping the door handle was empty. The handle, the door come to that, had vanished.

The Doctor was standing in a muddy patch of a deserted beach, not far from a cold grey sea that lapped the shores. The sky was a mass of grey clouds, grimly expecting rain to fall. Bar a few patches of reedy grass, there was no sign of life, love or lunacy.

'This is a very odd waiting room,' the Doctor conceded, shrugging off any bewilderment or panic. It wouldn't do to lose his calm in front of Glitz. 'Where are the hopelessly out of date magazines, eh, Glitz?' he quipped, turning to see with no surprise that the Fantasy Factory, Mr. Popplewicks and their offices had vanished. What did surprise him was that Glitz had disappeared as well.

The Doctor was staring at the endless muddy sand dunes stretching to the horizon. 'Glitz!' he called, but there was no sign of anyone in the dunes, or even shelter behind which they could hide. But, through the wind he caught a familiar chuckle.

The Doctor turned his attention to the grey sky, not noticing the patch of mud directly below his feet had begun to bubble and froth silently. 'What have you done with him?' he demanded, completely sick of playing Alice in Wonderland.

The voice replied inside his head. _Look to your own predicament, Doctor_.

Being stuck on a rainy beach? He'd been threatened with worse.

It was then that he realized something very cold, wet and strong clamped around his right ankle. The Doctor instantly looked down to see an emaciated, skeletal hand, streaked with slime, had punched out of the mud was encircling his ankle tightly. The mud around them was frothing and seething. Another hand burst free of the surface, then another, then another, and another...

The Doctor fought down the rising panic. 'This is an illusion,' he said as loudly and as calmly as he could. He was not in reality, but a computational matrix that reacted to the memory patterns of Time Lords. Living Time Lord brains were logically more powerful than the dead ones that had been downloaded into the Matrix over the centuries. His belief would set him free.

'I deny it!' he boomed.

But, to no avail, as a hand clamped itself around his left ankle and another on his right thigh. Cold moisture seeped through the surface of his trousers. The hands weren't just holding him still; they were starting to pull him down. His sneakers were already sinking into the mud.

'This isn't happening!' the Doctor insisted, feeling the tug on his legs increase. Another hand joined the fight and more still were breaking free of the mud. The Doctor abandoned his attempts to gain control of the Matrix and, forced by blind instinct, moved to rip the hands free, before giving that up and pummeling them with his fists, trying to get them to flinch and let go.

It was a mistake.

The moment the Doctor abandoned his denial of what was happening was the moment it obviously became real. The hands pulled harder, more hands broke the surface, grabbing the tail ends of his frock coat. Bent double, the Doctor was able to keep his balance for a moment, and then he was ripped backwards to land heavily into the mud which gave way under his back.

Cold, bubbling goo frothed over his arms, legs, shoulders, waist. The hands nearest grabbed his hands, wrists, waist, anything they could. And then they pulled. The Doctor fought back with his body, not his mind, and so sunk deeper into the mud.

_You are dead, Doctor._

'Not yet,' the Doctor growled. The muddy quicksand added its own strength to the fight. The seething mud washed over the Doctor's stomach and the hands pulled harder.

_Goodbye, Doctor. _The Valeyard's voice was a child's farewell.

The quicksand now encased his torso and one of his legs. More hands had emerged from the mud and now flailed lifelessly, as if not knowing what to do since they were not needed. The Doctor closed his eyes. Brute force by either physical or mental means was useless. That's what the Fantasy Factory had been for, to annoy and irritate and distract him. He had to _think_. To understand his way out of this.

'Kill me,' the Doctor shouted over the bubbling mud and the cold wind, 'and you will never gain my remaining regenerations!'

_But you've already signed them away._

The Doctor grinned up at the sky as the mud lapped at his blonde curls. 'To J.J. Chambers! Not to _you!_'

The icy suction didn't seem so strong now. The Doctor craned to lift his head from the mud, eager to hear the response. Was that a sigh he heard? Or a worried intake of breath?

_For the sake of this charade I _am _J.J. Chambers_, the Valeyard insisted. _I thought you understood - you are in a world entirely of my making!_

'Then I deny your world!' the Doctor retorted simply.

It could have been his imagination, but the hands gripping his body were not so tight.

Glitz had jumped when the Doctor had ripped open the waiting room door and disappeared, especially when it seemed the same thing had happened to him. In less than a heartbeat the waiting room and the Fantasy Factory and all the irritating identical skreeds inside it had just sort of, fallen away, leaving him elsewhere. Somewhere bright, shiny and warm unlike the cold gloom of before.

He was in a TARDIS, he knew that much; a large hexagonal chamber made of a matte grey substance. The walls were honeycombed with treacle-coloured discs from which emerged a low, threadbare hum. Directly beneath a spiral light fitting in the ceiling was a hexagonal, mushroom-shaped control console at the heart of which sat a crystalline column Glitz was fairly certain was called a time rotor.

Standing before the console, arms folded, was the Valeyard. He looked different from when Glitz had briefly encountered him in the Time Lord court - wearing the black skullcap and robes of the prosecution. Now, however, he was wearing a black trenchcoat with a blue and white-spotted cravat. A hatstand by the exterior doors boasted a black, wide-brimmed hat and an ebony cane.

'If you wish to survive, Sabalom, I suggest you remain very still and completely silent,' the Valeyard had announced, before turning to operate controls. 'I am the only one who has the power to release you from the Matrix. It is in your interests to obey me.'

'The Doc'll do it for free,' Glitz had retorted carefully, looking around to notice, grimly, that the only other exit - an archway in the far wall - was sealed with a wall emblazoned with the swirling infinity symbol that Time Lords seemed programmed to scrawl everywhere.

'Not if he's dead,' was the Valeyard's reply.

On the other side of the room, in a glass-fronted area that might have lead deeper into the Valeyard's TARDIS, a blue-fringed scanner image had unfurled from the ceiling to show a windy, desolate beach. The Doctor was being dragged into the mud by skeletal hands.

Glitz had found himself, for the first time in a long while, worried about someone other than himself. Reassuringly, he was now worried about himself. He knew the Valeyard had plenty of reasons to kill him, to silence him. How was he going to get out of this without any weaponry or even the assistance of Dibber to act as a human shield?

He realized the Doctor was shouting over the scanner channel, and the Valeyard was replying icily over a telescopic microphone that emerged from the console. The Doctor was yelling something about denying reality, and the Valeyard was anything but impressed.

'So you keep saying,' the Time Lord spoke mockingly into the microphone. 'But you know you haven't the strength! I have perfected the talent for mind control and illusion, which you chose, in your misguided youth, to neglect.'

The tinny voice of the Doctor filled the control room, through the bubbling of the mud and the lonely moan of the wind. He sounded so calm Glitz wondered if the image on the scanner was of someone else. '_Illusion is for the theatre, not real life,_' he pointed out. '_Even _you _must understand that!_'

'Illusion is an honoured Time Lord cult,' the Valeyard sneered back.

'Not any longer,' the Doctor replied sweetly. The quicksand was still sucking him down, having consumed his legs now, but the disembodied hands were gone like a passing thought. The simple act of admitting this was all an illusion had given the Doctor more than enough power to postpone his death. Now he had to press the advantage.

'As with mind-linking and levitation,' the Doctor continued to taunt the overcast sky, 'it is only seriously practiced nowadays by children's entertainers... and the weak-minded!'

_Feeble provocation, Doctor, _the heavens replied.

'Then here's a bit more,' the Doctor continued. 'I don't think that the High Council is in any position to ratify any so-called deal with you, do you? No any more. And since I didn't sign my lives over you, then the High Council is the only way left for you to get my remaining regenerations. Which they won't!'

A lazy smile appeared on the Valeyard's face. Glitz tried and failed to suppress a shudder. 'This charade was merely a way to expedite the inevitable. 'Then I shall merely have to wait a little longer to claim your lives,' the Time Lord replied.

On the scanner, the Doctor wearily shook his head.

'I have an inviolable agreement,' the Valeyard said smoothly.

The Doctor laughed. '_Rubbish!_' he boomed over the scanner. '_Such a covenant could only be lodged in the Matrix Core!_'

'Correct,' the Valeyard agreed. 'Pledged, signed and sealed by each and every member of the High Council. The moment you die in the Matrix, your unused lives will be transferred to my physical form.'

'_If you really believed that, you would have killed me at the first opportunity,_' the Doctor pointed out.

The Valeyard's voice dropped to a whisper. 'I wish to savor the moment of my death. After all,' he chuckled, 'how many people survive successful self-murder?'

The Doctor rolled his eyes, ignoring the fact everything below his shoulders was completely submerged. 'Garbage!' he spat. 'I've heard more sense from a lobotomized speelsnape. The truth of the matter is that you've lost your nerve! Too many games have been played with the Matrix for you to be able to trust either it _or_ the High Council!'

_I dictated the contract myself_, came the bored reply. _I _know _that it is inviolable._

'I'd have another look if I were you,' the Doctor cut in. 'Check the small print - and I mean the small print they inserted _after_ the deal was struck!'

_Again, feeble provocation._

The Doctor took a deep breath. 'The Inquisitor of my trial may have been as corrupt as you are, but you weren't expecting the Master to reveal what happened on Ravalox. Now the Inquisitor will have to follow due process of the law or expose her own corruption to the jury. She'll have no option to take the High Council to court over this matter to establish the truth. And, whether you like it or not, you are the chief prosecution witness against them!'

Silence.

The Doctor continued remorselessly. 'When they come to court - as they certainly will - things would be much easier if you weren't around to contradict their lies. Kill me and you kill yourself; that is the _only _contract the High Council will ratify!'

_I control the High Council, _the voice replied simply.

'Do you know?' the Doctor gasped with mock surprise, idly noticing a strange crackling on the edge of his senses. 'What makes you think that?'

_Because I am the Doctor, Lord President of Gallifrey, Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon, Protector of the Laws of Time and Defender of Gallifrey. The High Council answer to me, Doctor. My contract is inviolable. You are dead._

That the Doctor hadn't been expecting. But he found himself distracted by the crackling noise, which got louder and louder. Sparks began to dance between air molecules before him. And it was then that the Doctor noticed the tug of the quicksand had ceased.

'What are you doing?' the Doctor called out uncertain.

The crackling was deafening.

Glitz swallowed as streaks of interference slit through the scanner image, breaking up the Doctor's panicked face. The Valeyard was adjusting more displays and controls on the console as the image of the beach was consumed into a mass of static.

'You screed,' Glitz croaked, taken aback. 'Did you just do away with him?'

The Valeyard moved to another control panel. As Glitz stepped forward, the Time Lord turned his pale face to stare directly at the Andromedan space pirate. 'Be still, fool,' he hissed. 'The Doctor is unharmed. For the moment,' he added, and moved to another control panel.

'Oh yeah?' snorted Glitz, staring at the swirling mass of sparking black and white dots filling the scanner. 'Then what's going on?'

'It depends.'

'On what?'

'On whether I can spare the time to tell you or if you could understand me if I bothered to explain. Suffice it to say: another mind is attempting to break into my illusion,' the Valeyard replied, returning to the other side of the control console. He sounded slightly irritated, but not particularly concerned as he adjusted a fresh batch of controls and a sequence of lamps illuminated.

'And what mind would that b---?'

'I said, be silent,' ordered the Valeyard quietly.

Glitz was silent.

The roaring, sparking crackling sound continued remorselessly. The Doctor was struggling to free himself from the mud, taking advantage of the distraction. The Valeyard wasn't talking to him and the source of the strange noise was right on top of him.

The Doctor managed to free one soggy, stained arm and then began to scratch at the sandy surface in an attempt to free the other. At the time he was baffled. The Valeyard couldn't be the President of the High Council... could he? But then, the Doctor had only just learned he had been deposed as President, and still didn't know who had replaced him. And why would the High Council choose the Valeyard of all people to take over the post? The Doctor had an inkling, but it wasn't pleasant.

With his left hand now free, the Doctor redoubled his efforts. He looked up to see a humanoid silhouette had formed above the ditch, flickering in and out of vision as the crackling continued. Suddenly, it was clear and solid enough for the Doctor to identify the figure materializing before him.

'Oh no,' he groaned, shaking his other arm free. 'It would have to be you!'

'Show a little gratitude, my dear Doctor,' replied the form as it finally stabilized. 'I am here at enormous inconvenience to myself.'

The figure was now real and solid standing over the Doctor.

The figure of the Master.


	2. Delaying Tactics

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter 2: _Delaying Tactics_

To be honest, the Doctor was almost relieved to see his oldest enemy. He understood the Master, could predict him, know him - something he couldn't with the Valeyard, or at least he hoped he couldn't. Shaking off the thoughts he didn't want to think, he concentrated on the positives. Just this once, he and the Master were allies against a common enemy. The Master had provided the Doctor with witnesses to rebut the forged Matrix evidence, revealed the Valeyard's identity and role in the conspiracy, and given Glitz the vital clue as to the whereabouts of the Valeyard's base.

And now he had come to rescue. Or was he planning to provide the coup de grace and kill the Doctor once and for all during this moment of weakness?

'My apologies,' the Doctor said quickly. 'I'm grateful. Now, please, get me out!'

The Master reached out a black-gloved hand, clamped it around the Doctor's stained forearm much as the severed hands had done, and hauled with all his might, never once moving his feet from the point where he stood. 'I didn't realize illusions could be so repulsive,' the Master grunted as the Doctor was hauled from the oozing mud. The stinking slime muted all the colours of the Doctor's attire, crusted globules of black marking the handprints of the creatures that had tried to drown the Doctor in the first place.

'Now what?' the Doctor grimaced as his feet were freed from the bog.

'The difficult part,' the Master muttered, closing his eyes. 'Concentrate,' he ordered.

The Doctor did so, closing his eyes.

Seconds later, the beach was deserted. Seconds after it, it never existed.

The Doctor opened his eyes to see a thick patch of swirling fog, which rapidly began to clear. The Master was beside him, eyes closed, gripping the Doctor's wrist. The Doctor noticed that the muddy slime had vanished, leaving his clothes completely dry and pristine. The last of the fog cleared to show a narrow alleyway between two tall brick buildings. It was night, the only source of illumination a single, badly maintained gas lamp.

The Doctor recognized his surroundings. It was the same alley he and Glitz had arrived in upon entering the Matrix, in the ground of the Fantasy Factory. 'We're still in the Matrix,' he observed, as the Master released his wrist at last.

'It's worse than that,' the Master gasped, as though out of breath. '_You're_ still in the Valeyard's illusion.'

'Surely you can get me out of something so elementary,' the Doctor chided, arching an eyebrow.

'Not when he is sustaining the it by drawing power from the very core of the Matrix,' the Master snapped.

'That must mean you're using up massive amounts of energy to sustain your presence,' the Doctor deduced. 'No wonder you're not your usual suave, urbane self,' he mocked. The Master glared at him, unable to gather breath to throw back an insult. 'We've got to find him quickly before he can cause any more trouble.'

The Master gave a pained chuckle. '_That_ you must do alone.' Suddenly, the black-clad Time Lord was so pale the Doctor could see straight through him to the decaying brickwork of the wall behind him. Substance returned to the Time Lord, but his edged were blurred and rippling. 'He can't risk harming you until he's confirmed the wording of the contract in the Matrix...'

The Doctor tutted. 'I know that, but if we can find him before...'

He broke off as the Master shimmered once again and vanished, leaving the Doctor standing alone the in the alley. The sudden isolation cut into the Doctor, now without even Glitz to show off to and be distracted by. Distantly, a bell rang and the Doctor fancied rats were watching him from the shadows.

With no other plan, the Doctor decided to retrace his steps to the Fantasy Factory. Perhaps the Mr. Popplewicks would be able to help this time? Cheered with his new purpose, the Doctor strode down the alley, skidding to a halt as he spotted the rainwater barrel as the fog cleared.

The last time he had seen that barrel, something had exploded out of the water and tried to drown him. At the time, he had put it down to an illusion designed to scare and humiliate rather than an attempt on his life, but after recent events, the Doctor wasn't so sure. Maybe the Valeyard had been trying to kill him from the very start? In any case, he wasn't about to investigate it again.

'Careful,' he muttered to himself with a weak smile as he sidestepped the barrel that nearly filled the alley.

The Doctor froze in mid-step, the smile fading from his face.

On the cobblestones before him, there was a glistening patch of water, then another and another. Wet footprints of something that had climbed out of the barrel and down the alleyway and out of sight. The footprints were not of any animal the Doctor knew, but it would be very easy to find out, just follow the footprints and he would find the owner. After all, a quick glimpse couldn't hurt, could it?

The Doctor shook his head. He was being manipulated again, his curiosity being turned against him. Or had he just noticed a very obvious trap? Either way, should he continue towards the Fantasy Factory? 'Perhaps not,' he decided out aloud, then turned one hundred and eighty degrees to head back the way he came.

He stopped.

Another set of wet, grotesque footprint, identical to the other set in everything but direction, wound their way down the alley, past the place the Doctor and the Master had materialized, and out of sight. Either there were two creatures in the barrel, or another illusion? Was one real and one fake, in which case either direction held a fifty-fifty chance of danger? Were they both real? Or both illusions designed to do nothing more than confuse and delay them while the instigator was busy?

'Is this the best you can do?' the Doctor shouted angrily at the night sky. 'So much power yet so little imagination!' he sneered.

A harsh, evil laugh rolled down the alleyway from both directions.

The Valeyard had finally cleared the screen to reveal an empty beach and Glitz had watched his captor unhurriedly adjust the scanner until it showed the grounds of the Fantasy Factory. On the display, the Doctor was raging next to that creepy barrel of rainwater.

'So you think I lack imagination?' the Valeyard laughed. 'We shal1 see, Doctor.'

Glitz sighed. 'But you won't kill him,' he reminded the Valeyard. 'The Doc's right, inne? You're dead frightened the High Council's got at your contract and the one the Doctor signed won't work.'

The Valeyard turned to face him and smiled a smile that could have been a gateway to hell.

'Don't be too sure, Sabalom,' he said softly. 'Don't be too sure.'

The last trace of ion storms were fading, leaving the gigantic bronze space station hanging silently in the centre of a gigantic spaceship graveyard. Inside the main courtroom, Melanie Jane Bush was having an extremely strange day. Last week she had met a strangely dressed man calling himself the Doctor, who, with her aide and that of a young woman called Peri, had defeated an alien invasion. That morning at her home in Pease Pottage, Mel had heard someone call her name. Turning around, everything had gone black and she had found herself inside a foam-lined coffin sitting outside this court. It appeared that she - and some nervous crook called Glitz - had been summoned by a being called the Master to testify on behalf of the Doctor, who was on trial by his own people. No sooner had Mel and Glitz joined proceedings when the Master revealed the whole trial was a farce to dispose of the Doctor for unintentionally discovering some terrible Time Lord secret, and the prosecutor was the Hyde to the Doctor's Jekyll.

Then the prosecutor had vanished into the Time Lord's gigantic computer Matrix and the Doctor and Glitz had followed, while the Master had announced he was planning for the Doctor and the Valeyard to eliminate each other, then suddenly, without warning, he had vanished from the screen he'd been hogging since her arrival. It seemed that it looked like the Valeyard was winning and so he needed to save the Doctor in order to restore the balance. Or something.

The jury had risen and were now muttering and grumbling about due process and taking the High Council to account for the conspiracy. The Inquisitor, a female judge dressed in white, spoke urgently and quietly with several of the red-clad guards who blocked the doors to the exit.

At the moment Mel was beginning to regret asking the Keeper of the Matrix what was happening. He was more concerned at his position now the treasured Matrix had been violated on his watch, and he was still wondering how the Master had gained access. 'This is so typical of the Master,' he was complaining. 'First he's here, then he's gone; a most confusing fellow!'

'Does it matter?' asked Mel idly. 'Just as long as he helps.'

The Keeper looked sadly up at the blank screen which should have allowed them to see what was happening in the micro-universe, but either the Valeyard - or the Master - had sabotaged it. 'I fear that whatever the Master does will be exclusively for his own purpose.'

'According to the Doctor, most Time Lords are the same,' said Mel icily, remembering the passion of her friend when he had discovered the horrors his people had perpetrated.

'A very cynical observation,' the Keeper cried, annoyed.

The Inquisitor finished an earnest conversation with a senior member of the court and swept importantly across the courtroom to the Keeper and Mel. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. 'The High Council has resigned,' she hissed urgently. 'Which, I gather, has sent Gallifrey into turmoil!'

The Keeper looked paler than normal. 'Do they yet know of the events that have taken place here?' he asked, gravely. The discovery that the Time Lords had broken all of their own laws to fix a problem that should never had occurred and then blame an innocent was not good at the best of times and these were not the best of times.

The Inquisitor shook her head and the Keeper sighed in relief. 'No and we must keep it that way. Knowledge that the Matrix has been violated by outsiders, of the Ravalox stratagem, could lead to civil war!'

'And that's what the Master wants!' Mel interrupted. 'He can only do that once the Doctor and the Valeyard are dead, but if we help the Doctor find the Valeyard and defeat the Master, then no one need every know!' It was against her principals to aid a conspiracy, but it was either this or leave the Doctor to his fate.

'If only it were that simple, young woman,' said the Inquisitor sadly, and returned to the others.

Mel watched her go, wondering exactly what she meant by that.

In the Valeyard's TARDIS, Glitz watched the scanner as the Doctor crept along another part of the alleyway that seemed to circle the factory grounds. On both sides, doorways broke the brick walls. The Valeyard was leaning against the console, staring intently at the screen.

'The Doctor's thought patterns are very confusing,' he murmured. 'I sense that he is concerned about something... something... _someone_... called Mel Bush,' the Valeyard murmured, suddenly understanding. He turned to face the controls and began adjusting the settings.

'Mel Bush?' echoed Glitz baffled, before inspiration struck. 'That bit of siddle he's knocking about with.

Her name's Mel. Or was it Peri?'

'Indeed,' the Valeyard muttered, before punching a sequence of button on the control panel. The image on the scanner was replaced by what seemed to be a very detailed sketch of a woman's face, surrounded by a mass of curly hair. It was the face of Melanie Jane Bush.

'That's her,' said Glitz trying to sound helpful. Maybe the Valeyard was his best bet of getting out alive.

'Perfect.'

'She's done you no harm though,' Glitz pointed out, more to establish what the Valeyard was going than genuine concern for the irritating redhead.

'Sentimentality does not become you, Sabalom,' the Valeyard snorted, activating a final control and the image returned to the Doctor in the alleyway.

'At least I'm capable of it,' Glitz retorted automatically.

The Valeyard stared at him as if unable to understand what Glitz was saying. 'It's a weakness,' he said flatly, 'and not a thing to boast about.'

Glitz decided it was time to change the subject and pointed to the scanner image. 'What are you gonna do with him now?' he asked.

'Lose him in a very safe place,' the Valeyard replied, flicking one more control. The image of the scanner was now focussed on the Doctor. Around the Doctor, a spinning, circular funnel of light appeared.

'What for?' Glitz protested. 'You're running out of time! Someone's already managed to break into your illusion!' And Glitz had a fair idea who that might be, remembering the bearded figure that had interrupted his entry into the Matrix to hand over a note for the Doctor.

'I only need to keep the Doctor safe until I have confirmed the wording of my contract,' the Valeyard said calmly. 'Then, I shall make my move.'

'Knowing the Time Lords I suggest you get on with it,' Glitz grunted. 'And if the contract's useless?'

'I have overlooked nothing,' said the Valeyard, glancing at the sealed door behind Glitz.

The Doctor crept through the gloom to the doorway and leapt in front of it. A shallow alcove ending in a thick wooden door, just as it should be. Turning around, the Doctor tried the doorway further up on the opposite side of the alleyway. Empty. It felt silly doing this all checking, but the wet footprints were around and the Doctor had no intention of being caught by surprise.

The Doctor moved on down the alley towards the next doorway. In the alcove he had just left behind, a dark hooded shape stepped into the alleyway, despite the fact the door had not opened and the doorway had been empty seconds before. The figure wore a black hooded robe that might have been worn by a monk, its hem brushing the cobblestoned ground.

Silently, the figure slid through the gloom towards the Doctor, who was checking a doorway. As he relaxed and prepared to check another, something cold and sharp prodded him in the back. Startled, the Time Lord spun around to face the hooded figure, one sleeve raised threateningly. A gnarled, green claw with three long, yellow talons stretched out from the sleeve. Rainwater glistened on its flesh, like the footprints the figure had left on the cobbles.

The claw reached for the Doctor's unprotected neck.


	3. Circular Logic

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter 3: _Circular Logic_

'Looking for something, sir?' came a familiar, clipped voice from inside the hood. The claw withdrew from the Doctor and flipped back the cowl to reveal a familiar silver-haired head, wearing half-framed spectacles.

'Ah,' the Doctor said, relaxing. 'Mr. Poppelwell!'

'_Popplewick_, actually, sir,' the clerk corrected, and lifted his other arm to reveal a perfectly normal hand, with which he twisted and removed the fake, dripping claw he had been wearing over his hands.

'Do you get extra for dressing up?' the Doctor asked dryly. 'Or is it some sort of fetish?'

Popplewick dropped the alien claw into a pocket on the inside of his robe. 'I sense a certain hostility, sir,' he observed matter-of-factly as he did so.

Suddenly, the Doctor's hands were clamped around the clerk's robed arms. 'You'll sense considerably more if you don't tell me where the Valeyard is,' he growled.

Popplewick was affronted. 'Please, sir!' he complained. 'Show respect for the cloth!'

'The cloth is safe,' the Doctor warned. 'It's you I intend to flatten.'

Popplewick looked at him with deep contempt. 'Such aggression, sir,' he sighed. 'You are letting the darker angels of your nature take over your behavior. If you're going to let this happen, I must ask why you ever came here!'

The Doctor frowned, as if stung, and released Popplewick, who smoothed down his robes. 'And me just a humble messenger,' he muttered.

'The ancient Greeks used to kill messengers who brought bad news,' the Doctor reminded him pointedly.

Popplewick nodded. 'An unruly lot, the Greeks, sir.' He beamed up at the Time Lord. 'But fortunately the message I bring will placate and soothe, sir. Mr. Chambers has granted you an appointment.'

'The Valeyard?' the Doctor asked icily, refused to get drawn back into the facade.

'The very one, sir,' Popplewick nodded.

The Doctor stepped back. 'Then lead on,' he suggested.

Poppewick was in no way surprised at the invitation. 'At once, sir,' he smiled and waddled off down the passage. The Doctor followed, idly noticing his companion was no longer leaving a trail of wet footprints. 'I'm afraid the journey is a long one, sir,' Popplewick continued. 'But before we start we must collect a friend of yours, sir.'

'Sabalom Glitz?' inquired the Doctor eagerly.

'No, sir,' Popplewick said apologetically. 'He's already with Mr. Chambers, sir.'

'Will you stop calling me "sir"!' the Doctor demanding, wincing.

'Of course, sir,' said Popplewick brightly. 'No, sir, the young person we have to collect is a Miss Melanie Bush, sir.'

The Doctor was taken aback. 'She's here?' he exclaimed, surprised.

'Followed you into the Matrix, sir,' Popplewick explained with a shrug. 'Such a foolish thing to do.'

'Indeed,' the Doctor muttered, but he could believe it. It was much like the Mel he met and the Mel he had seen himself travelling with in Matrix projections. Those, however, had been dependent on both of them surviving the trial unscathed. 'And where is she?'

The apparently endless, grimy alleyway did have an end, an abrupt one ending in a heavy green door marked _12/13_. Popplewick waddled down to it and shuffled to one side. 'Through there, sir,' the clerk said, pressing himself against the wall to allow the Doctor to move past up to the door. The Time Lord started at the portal and the narrow barred window at the top for a long minute. Sulphurous light spilt out into the alley, providing most of the illumination in the alleyway.

'After you,' the Doctor said quietly, and stepped back away from the door.

Popplewick smiled with thinly disguised exasperation. 'You lack trust, sir. This is no trick.' He turned and pressed gently against the heavy metal door. With a nerve-rending shriek, it swung back allowing more light into the alleyway. Popplewick stepped up into the doorway, almost silhouetted against the glow.

'Follow me, sir,' said Popplewick, and disappeared inside.

The Doctor turned and looked back down the alleyway, but the light from the doorway made it hard to see anything beyond the pool of light. Indeed, part of him suspected the alleyway, the barrel and the Fantasy Factory had ceased to exist, like an idea forgotten. The squeaks of the rodents, the tolling of bells and the distant, distorted sounds of revelry could still be heard though.

Rubbing his cat badge for good luck, the Doctor turned and entered the doorway. A moment later, the door swung shut. The distant noises of Victorian England at night ceased, as if switched off. Indeed, everything outside the door had ceased to be, leaving nothing but a black void - the only light from the barred window, the only sound a faint humming noise.

Inside the Valeyard's TARDIS, Glitz peered through the spinning, swirling circle of ever changing light as first Popplewick and then Doctor stepped into the building. As the door swung shut, the Valeyard snapped down two switches. 'Now, Sabalom, you will see the power of the most perfect geometrical shape.'

'Can't wait,' Glitz yawned, as the scanner image changed to show the Doctor and Popplewick standing in a tunnel. He wasn't sure what was going to happen but it was obvious that the Valeyard was certain that this final illusion would finish the Doctor off - at least, unless the Valeyard said otherwise...

Beyond the imposing door, the Doctor found a circular tunnel made of brick, as if he was standing in the London sewers. Thankfully, the ground was clear and the air was clean. The bright light came from gas lamps arranged around the doorway. After a few steps the tunnel became gloomier, as the space between the lamps seemed to get further and further, but maybe that was just a trick of the light. Like the way an obviously straight tunnel seemed to curve slightly to the left.

Popplewick stood further down the tunnel and waited patiently for the Doctor to follow. Casting the occasional glance back at the closed door and wondering what, if anything, still lay behind it, the Doctor moved down the tunnel after Popplewick.

After a few moments, it struck the Doctor that there was a genuine curve to the tunnel, for he could no longer see the entrance, even though it couldn't be more than fifteen seconds walk away. Popplewick increased his pace ever so slightly, kicking up the hem of his robes. 'Not much further, sir,' he promised as they moved into the gloom between gas lamps.

The Doctor was not prone to claustrophobia, but he felt uncomfortable in this all-in-all cramped tunnel leading... where? In the fictional world of the Fantasy Factory, it could be leading to the Thames, out to sea, or maybe down into Hell itself? In fact, he was finding it hard to remember how long they'd been walking down this tunnel. If only it was a bit more cheerful. 'What a depressing place,' he sighed.

Popplewick looked over his pudgy shoulder back at the Doctor. 'I'm surprised you don't recognize it, sir,' he said, frowning over his half-frame spectacles.

'Should I?' asked the Doctor, baffled.

Popplewick continued to frown. 'Oh, yes, sir,' he confirmed.

The Doctor opened his mouth to ask Popplewick what could possibly make him think that the Doctor frequented gloomy, depressing subterranean passages when a third voice was heard, a shrill female voice booming down the tunnel towards them.

'Doctor!'

The Doctor halted and so did Popplewick. 'Melanie?' he called cautiously.

The only reply was the echoes of running footsteps on the cold stone floor.

'Melanie!' the Doctor called. He'd only really met her twice, but his recent failure to protect Peri galvanized him. If she was in trouble he had to save her, even if this was another of the Valeyard's traps.

'Help me, Doctor!' Mel cried, panicked.

The Doctor peered down the tunnel, but there seemed to be no more gas lamps. The gloom was an impenetrable curtain and Mel was stuck behind it, facing something she didn't believe she could handle. Which meant something very nasty indeed. 'What's happening?' he demanded of Popplewick.

No reply.

The Doctor swung to face his guide - and realized he was standing alone in the tunnel. The Time Lord spun around, but there was no sign of him. Surely if he had simply run off then his shadow would be caught by the gas lamps, and his footsteps would echo over and over?

It was as if he'd simply ceased to exist, like an idea forgotten. Which, the Doctor supposed, he was.

Nevertheless, he called out for the clerk. His own voice bounced off the tunnel walls reassuringly. 'Popplewick? Mr. Popplewick?'

'Forget him, Doctor,' urged another voice right behind him.

The Doctor spun around and saw that Mel was standing in the gloom right behind him, hunched over, hands on her knees as if exhausted after running a mile. Maybe she had, how far did this tunnel go anyway? And how far down it had he already gone.

'We must get out of here,' Mel was gasping.

'Are you all right?' the Doctor asked.

Mel managed to nod. 'For the moment. But there's something dreadful down here, I can sense it,' she said, straightening up and looking around her grimly.

'Let's go,' the Doctor, taking her hand in his and heading back the way he'd came.

Mel didn't move. 'The door's this way,' she pointed out, nodding in the direction she had run from.

'But _I _came from _this _direction,' the Doctor replied brightly and moved off once again, but was drawn short as he was holding Mel's hand and she was digging her boots into the ground.

'There isn't a door in that direction,' Mel snapped, irritated.

The Doctor abandoned his attempts to move forward. He turned to face Mel, determined to keep his temper after losing it so badly with Popplewick. 'There must be,' he explained reasonably. 'I just came through it. Come and look,' he offered and he once again set off, still holding Mel's hand.

This time, she moved with him down the tunnel. After a few moments of walking, she spoke. Her voice was small, her eyes downcast. 'I'm frightened, Doctor,' she admitted.

The Doctor smiled warmly, but they had moved between gas lamps and the gesture was lost. 'There's no need to be,' he assured her. 'We'll soon be out of here,' he promised. Indeed, if he remembered rightly, they would see the exit any moment.

'I think I've been going round in circles,' said Mel, shaking her head with confusion.

'Circles?'

'You know,' Mel prompted. 'Round things.'

'How do you know?' the Doctor asked, curious, and glad for something to take his mind off their depressing surroundings. They had just stepped into another patch of light, illuminated a jagged scar in the brickwork to their right.

'Look at the wall,' Mel instructed, pointing at the scar. 'See that? I've passed it three times.'

The Doctor stared at the scar. He was certain he and Popplewick had not passed it on their way in. 'Are you certain?' he asked, suspiciously.

Mel sounded defensive at the very idea. 'Of course I am!'

The Doctor shook his head of unruly blond curls. 'No,' he said firmly. 'If you'd been perambulating in an annular fashion, you would have passed not only your entrance, but mine!'

'I haven't passed any doors!' Mel complained, annoyed.

The Doctor shrugged, trying to be placating. 'Therefore you can't have been progressing in an orbital fashion,' he concluded cheerfully.

Mel wrenched her hand from the Doctor's. 'Oh no?' she challenged.

The Doctor took a deep breath. Of all the time and places to have an argument over nothing! 'Well, if you think you were, explain!' he challenged back.

'I don't know,' Mel grumbled mutinously.

'If you don't know, how can you know you've been cruising in a cyclical manner?' the Doctor demanded, marshalling the ultimate argument.

'I told you!' Mel snapped. 'The markings on the wall,' she crowed, pointing to the scar in the mortar. 'I've passed them three times!'

The Doctor ran a hand through his curls in exasperation. 'If you'd passed them three times, you would also have passed the entrances - yes?'

'No,' said Mel firmly.

'No?' asked the Doctor, uncertain.

'No!' Mel was definite.

'I don't understand. Why are you saying "no"?'

'I don't know,' Mel admitted, shrugging awkwardly.

'You don't know why you're saying "no"?' the Doctor clarified doubtfully.

'No!' Mel agreed. 'I mean yes, I do know why I'm saying "no". I'm saying "no" because I don't know why I've passed the markings three times, and yet haven't passed entrances!'

There was an awkward pause.

The Doctor was frowning. 'We're getting very long winded,' the Doctor observed darkly.

Mel shared his worry. 'I know. Positively orbital.'

The Doctor held up his hands. 'All right, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you _have _passed this way before...'

'Right.'

'...so how could you have done that without encountering the entrance?'

'You've just said that,' Mel pointed out, confused.

'If it's worth saying once,' the Doctor sniffed, 'it's worth a circulatory restatement.'

'Then I don't know,' Mel sighed unhappily.

'What?' the Doctor asked, confused.

'Why I've passed the entrances without seeing them. I can only assume that they've been moved.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Moved as in transportation?'

Mel blinked. 'No... Hidden. Disguised, maybe?'

'Who would do that?' the Doctor protested, although it struck him right away there was a very obvious answer that, for some reason that escaped him, he'd forgotten.

'I don't know,' Mel said again, before breaking off. Her eyes widened. 'Unless someone _wants_ us to think were not orbiting this circulation of a circumference in a peripatetic mode?' She blinked. 'Did I say all that?' she asked the Doctor, amazed and a little unnerved.

'It would have ruptured my larynx if I had,' the Doctor quipped.

'What's happening?' Mel asked, looking around them in anxiety.

'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted, looking down both ends of the tunnel. 'It's as though we're becoming obsessed by circumambulation. Added to which a degree of circumloquacious circumvolution has edged into our vocabulary.'

'Not to mention circular tautology,' Mel pointed out.

The Doctor felt curiously lightheaded and swayed uncertainly. 'What a terrible thought,' he whispered. 'Trapped like mice in an exercise wheel - forever doomed to run around and around and around and get nowhere...'

'What are we going to do?' Mel asked desperately.

'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted. How many times had he said that since entering this accursed tunnel? Come to think it, how had he ended up inside it? Someone or something had lured him in... He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it. 'It's as though we're being conditioned to accept, in every respect, the world of the circle...'

'The most complete shape contained in a single line,' said Mel reverently.

'Also the perfect trap,' the Doctor said, eyes widening in realization.


	4. Broken Circle

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter Four: _Broken Circle_

Mel's voice sounded distant, almost sleepy. 'No beginning. No end. Complete in itself.' She snapped out of it. 'Let's go round the corridor one more time,' she suggested, trying to sound enthusiastic. A bit _too_ enthusiastic.

The Doctor glowered at her. 'Whatever for?' he demanded.

'We may still find the entrance,' Mel said brightly. It was as though all her panic and worry had been switched off. Like a machine.

'But you've already been round three times,' the Doctor snapped.

'Then one more circuit for luck,' said Mel with a shrug as if she didn't have a care in the world.

'Why?' her companion demanded.

'Why not?' Mel demanded back. 'We've nothing else to do!'

'So we go round and round until we collapse?' the Doctor exclaimed, rolling his eyes.

'Or escape,' Mel pointed out, enunciating each word with care. 'You're a pass master at escaping.'

'But how do you find a gap in the most perfect shape ever created?' he asked softly, studying his companion intently. 'Especially when your mind is being conditioned to think in circles.'

'I don't understand,' said Mel, unconcerned.

'I do,' the Doctor muttered. 'And suddenly very clearly.'

Suddenly Mel ran past the Doctor and down the tunnel in the direction he'd come from. 'Come on, Doctor,' she called brightly, like an energetic five year old cajoling a slower parent.

'You go on,' the Doctor replied coldly. 'I want to think.'

Mel strolled onwards, calling over her shoulder. 'Come along, Doctor,' she called, and her voice echoed and re-echoed until it became a meaningless jangle of noise. All the time colour and substance drained from her with every step. As the Time Lord watched, Mel moved into a patch of gloom, and didn't emerge.

The Doctor stood alone in the tunnel, hands in his pockets.

'Dear oh me, sir,' tutted a voice behind him. Calmly, the Doctor glanced over his shoulder. Mr. Popplewick was standing behind him, as if he'd never left. 'You're proving far too clever for us,' he admitted.

'Where am I?' asked the Doctor coldly.

'Inside your own mind, sir,' the clerk replied helpfully. 'Thought that would confuse you good and proper.'

'It almost did,' the Doctor conceded.

Popplewick coughed self-consciously. 'This way, sir,' he said awkwardly, turning on his heel to head further down the tunnel, where there were no more gas lamps. The Doctor followed. For a few moments they were wandering through pitch darkness until the Doctor caught a patch of light through dense, swirling fog. The rotund shape of Popplewick pierced the fog and suddenly they were in the outside air once more.

The Doctor looked around. They were back at the start of the alleyway that the Doctor continually found himself at, first with Glitz, then the Master, now Popplewick. The Time Lord turned to peer into the tunnel they had emerged from but the light from the gas lamp showed it was bricked up a few inches inside. There was no way they could have walked through that. Obviously.

Popplewick was talking again. 'You'd better wait here, sir,' he advised the Doctor. 'I should think Mr. Chambers will want t o have a word with vou.'

The Doctor took a step closer to the clerk. 'You're not by any chance Mr. Chambers, are you?' he asked.

'Me, sir?' Popplewick almost laughed. 'Oh, no, sir!' he choked as he turned and began to waddle down the alleyway once more.

'Are you sure?' asked the Doctor innocently, before lashing out and grabbing the loose sleeve of Popplewick's cloak. He pulled back...

...and the cloak flew into his hands, an empty garment that seemed to have suspended in mid air. There was no trace of Mr. Popplewick, bar his amused voice which seemed to come from somewhere above the top of the alleyway.

_I told you, sir,_ the voice said, placing heavy emphasis on the 'sir'. _I'm just a humble servant._

The bell began toll again as the Doctor sighed and let the robe fall the cobblestones below. He had the horrible feeling he was wasting the little time he had left.

'That was a bit of a waste of time,' Glitz sighed as, on the scanner screen the Doctor began to pace that particular part of the alley way, occasionally staring at the empty ground he'd let the cloak fall. At least that spinning circle effect was gone. Glitz turned to see the Valeyard studying a data read-out screen intently.

His captor had been silent so long Glitz's boredom was getting the better of his fear. 'Either your perfect shape theory's wrong, or his control is getting stronger,' he pointed out childishly.

The Valeyard didn't look up from the screen. 'Be silent,' he said coldly.

'Shouting at me won't help,' Glitz protested, waving a hand in the direction of the scanner. 'It's what you'r e

gonna do with him that matters!'

'Why do fools always state the obvious?' the Valeyard wondered, shaking his head.

'So that they can get things in the open and size 'em up,' Glitz replied smugly. 'Something super-brains don't do very often.'

The Valeyard favored him with a cold smile. 'Believe it or not, the suggestion was rhetorical.'

'Nevertheless it still don't answer what you're gonna do about him,' Glitz reminded him.

'He will die,' the Valeyard said firmly, studying the displays once more.

'Yeah, but only if the contract with the High Council proves bona fide. But what if it don't?' Glitz demanded.

The Valeyard's lips twitched into a smile. 'Then _everything_ dies,' he said with such utter certainty that even Glitz - a longer than life skeptic and cynic - believed him.

The Andromedan suddenly felt very cold and very scared. 'Eh?' he croaked, his mouth dry. 'Everything?' he echoed fearfully. 'Bit excessive, innit? I mean, I understand the disappointment when a caper falls apart...'

'I am not engaged in a caper,' the Valeyard said absently, moving to another control panel.

'Call it whatever you like,' Glitz offered generously. 'But you've gotta understand that even in criminal circles there are rules! You can't go round committing genocide and expect to continue earning an honest living as a crook! The public won't put up with it!'

The Valeyard's face was stiff, unyeilding. 'I need the Doctor's remaining lives,' he said softly, without a hint of emotion. 'Without them I shall die. And if am denied them...'

'What you're planning is too... extreme,' Glitz announced, trying not to offend. Someone who was ready to wipe out every living thing was not someone to annoy with hyperbole.

'Then all they have to do is give me what I want,' said the Valeyard with a shrug.

'Even Time Lords can't give other people's lives away,' Glitz protested, feeling ever so slightly hysterical.

'If there is to be a future,' his captor replied with a smile, 'then they will have to start now...'

In the courtroom, Mel was going stir crazy. Indeed, she was considering snatching the Key to the Matrix from the Keeper, opening the Seventh Door and diving inside, just for something to happen. The Time Lords were muttering and arguing and demanding to return to Gallifrey, while the Inquisitor paced back and forth, wringing her hands.

'What is going on in there?' she hissed for the upteenth time.

'Please, madam,' the Keeper hissed to her. 'We must maintain a certain decorum and dignity...'

'Blast decorum and dignity!' the Inquisitor spat back. 'Gallifrey is in turmoil on the brink of war and who knows how much havoc has been done to the Matrix by intruders running around it!'

'_You have a right to be concerned, madam,_' said a smooth, echoing voice from above.

Mel, the Keeper, the Inquisitor and the rest of the Time Lords turned around to see the Matrix Screen was active once more. The bearded features of the Master were there, superimposed against a myriad of swirling multicoloured geometric shapes. He grinned like a predatory cat. '_Never have I had such an attentive audience,_' he mused with a chuckle.

The Keeper stepped forward anxiously. 'What has the Valeyard done to the Matrix? Do you know if the damage is irrepairable?'

'_The damage is minor - for now,_' the Master replied. '_The Valeyard, however, has yet to learn that his contract with the High Council has been revoked as, after all, the High Council no longer exists._'

'So that's why they quit,' Mel exclaimed over the gasps of the assembled Time Lords, who had not known the truth until now. 'To break the contract without the Valeyard realizing!'

The Master turned his burning eyes onto her. '_Exactly. Without that contract, should the Valeyard kill the Doctor then he will, of course, cease to exist. One cannot exist in the present without a past._'

The Inquisitor gritted her teeth. 'How did you know that the High Council have resigned?' she demanded. 'We've only just learned that ourselves!'

The Master grinned. '_I just happened to overhear you discussing it._'

The Inquisitor glanced nervously at the assembled Time Lords who were giving her highly suspicious looks. 'Then,' she said quickly, 'you will also know that the contract was highly illegal! It should never have been drawn up, let alone lodged in the Matrix!'

'_You may find the Valeyard in violent disagreement with you,_' the Master sneered.

'The Laws of Time are sacrosanct,' the Keeper said grandly. 'No Time Lord can interfere with their own past as the Valeyard intends to - surely he must understand that? Exception can be made for no-one!'

'_The Valeyard believes otherwise,_' the Master replied. '_He is dying and will do anything to prevent that._'

'Death comes to us all when we reach the end of our lives,' the Inquisitor said grimly.

'_Platitudes are a poor substitute for argument, my dear Inquisitor,_' snapped the Master, '_when the person they are aimed at has the power to destroy the known universe!_'

'He isn't capable!' the Inquisitor said icily.

'_Oh, but he is,_' the Master mused. '_I have located the Valeyard's base within the micro-universe - his own TARDIS. And it seems he has been very particular as to where he has materialized his control room._'

'Tell us!' ordered the Inquisitor after the Master finished speaking.

'_It has been materialized around the Time Vent,_' the renegade replied darkly.

The Time Lords gasped and began to mutter and panic. Several crept towards the doors which the Chancellery Guards were already considering fleeing through. The Keeper of the Matrix gripped the Key of Rassilon tightly, as he trembled. 'It's a bluff!' he shouted at the screen. 'He doesn't mean it! He will _not_ open it!' The old man was almost screaming.

'_As far as I can assertain, that is precisely his intention, my dear Keeper!_' the Master retorted.

'What's he talking about?' Mel demanded.

'Not now!' snapped the Inquisitor, wringing her hands.

'Please!' Mel cried. 'The Doctor's in there with this time vent thing - what's the danger?'

'The same danger that faces us all,' the Inquisitor growled.

The Keeper was rambling to himself, his voice getting louder and softer. Mel almost thought he had gone mad with terror. 'If the Valeyard does open the Time Vent, a surge of Erratic Time will enter our stabalised continuum.' He stroked his temples with trembling fingers. 'The effect will be devastating... like m-mixing matter and anti-matter...'

'Then you must stop the Valeyard before he can open the vent,' said Mel firmly.

'That could prove very difficult if not impossible, young woman,' the Inquisitor replied. Already her mind was racing as how to combat her one-time co-conspirator. 'We would have to move against him with great care, less we arouse his suspicions...'

The Keeper giggled nervously to himself. 'They say Rassilon calculated, yes, he calculated how much Erratic Time our continuum could withstand before the damage became irrevocable... Seventy-two seconds, that's all we've got once it's open, and time and space fall apart... Forever! Seventy-two seconds and if it isn't closed before seventy-three then it all ends, forever! In fact, it doesn't end, because it never happened and we're all dead because we can't ever have been alive...'

The Inquisitor ignored him. 'How 1ong do you anticpate it will be before the Valeyard realises his contract

has been withdrawn from the Matrix?' she asked the Master.

'Very soon,' was the reply.

The white-clad Time Lady took a deep breath. 'There may still be time to return the contract, if we can get the new High Council to ratify it immediately...'

The Master smiled wisftully. 'And that would almost certainly cost the Doctor his life,' he chuckled.

'No!' Mel exclaimed in horror. 'You can't betray the Doctor after all he's done for us...'

'The Doctor is not worth the universe,' the Inquisitor replied. 'He would have been found guilty anyway.'

The Keeper looked like he was about to start screaming with panic. 'If we do this, not only do we sacrifice the Doctor, we will also create an unacceptable precident. Time Lords returning to their own pasts to extend their life spans, over and over and over...'

'You're not thinking, Keeper,' the Inquisitor cut through his ramblings. 'If the Valeyard opens the Time Vent, there will no longer _be_ any precidents! In fact there will no longer be anything at all!'

Mel swallowed and made up her mind. The moment the way to the Seventh Door was clear she would steal the key and flee after the Doctor. His chances of survival would increase even if he just knew his peers had betrayed him once more.

But would she get a chance in time?

Glitz looked longingly at the double doors that lead out of the Valeyard's TARDIS. He wasn't brave enough to risk operating the controls on the console, and doubted the owner would let him leave. Besides, where would he go? Even if he escaped the TARDIS and the Fantasy Factory of the Matrix, got past the Time Lords on that space station and back to his own time and place, he felt certain that the Valeyard's apocalypse would catch up with him. He had no where to run.

The Valeyard had been staring at the scanner for some time, at what appeared to be circuit diagrams. Suddenly he reached out and touched a control. An image of the Doctor creeping down the alleyway reappeared on the scanner. The Valeyard crossed to a small metal hatch on the console and lifted it to reveal a small handle marked in mauve. Glitz felt a chill up his spine. 'What's wrong?' he asked, worried.

The Valeyard was looking down at the handle. 'It's gone,' he said simply, and then crossed to another panel and snapped down a row of switches. Lights went out across the control console. The Valeyard adjusted another sequence and more lamps extinguished.

'What's gone?' Glitz grimaced.

'The contract has been revoked.'

'Can't have!' Glitz wailed as the Valeyard continued to shut down his time machine.

'The High Council have resigned en masse, and any documents they have agreed to are null and void. The contract will not work. If I kill the Doctor, I will not gain his regenerations, but cease to exist.' The last winking lights on the console went out. 'And if _I_ die, we all die.'

The Valeyard adjusted a dial on the console. The control room began to get darker, the lights spilling from the roundels becoming a dark burnt orange that barely illuminated the control room. The familiar warbling hum of the time drives whined off into silence.

'You sure you looked in the right place?' Glitz wailed desperately as the humming ended.

'Of course I am,' said the Valeyard casually, crossing over to look at the scanner image which now lit most of the silent, dark control chamber. The image of the Doctor pacing began to jump, split and distort. Lines of interference ran through the image and rapidly thickened.

'Another mind has broken into my illusion,' observed the Valeyard icily.

Glitz scurried through the gloom towards the Valeyard. The screen showed nothing but static now. 'Y-you won't do anything silly, now, will you?' he asked lightly.

The Valeyard stared at the roaring swirl on the scanner for a moment and then turned. Through the gloom, Glitz saw his bony hand punch the red button beneath the open hatch on the console. 'Explosive bolts primed,' he announced, and punched the button again.

'No!' Glitz cried, lunging at the console, but it was too late.

Six shockingly loud cracks tore through the silent chamber. Glitz whirled around to see the sealed-off internal exit lined with smoke and crackling blue light which danced over the grooves between doors and walls. The sudden violence ended and Glitz realized he could hear something behind the portal - something that clanked and groaned, as if reality was coiling in pain and despair.

The Valeyard strode over to the doorway. 'All that is necessary now is to ease the door open,' he announced grandly, his eyes gleaming.

Glitz thought about what lay beyond the door and how it could kill every living thing.

Then he wished he hadn't.


	5. Negotiations on the Abyss

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter Five: _Negotiations on the Abyss_

The Doctor had walked the length of the alleyway twice. The barrel was dry, none of the doors opened, the distant voices had stopped and the bell was silent. He decided enough was enough and ran down the alleyway until he had entered the grounds of the Fantasy Factory. The only sign of life was the flashing neon sign, as nothing stirred behind the windows, not even the annoyed clerk that had hurled a harpoon at Sabalom Glitz. Had all the Mr. Popplewicks gone home for tea, leaving the Doctor alone in the dark?

The Doctor climbed the staircase up to the entrance to the Junior Mr. Popplewick's office. He tried the door. Locked. Delving into his pocket, the Doctor's hand found an old fashioned boy Scout's penknife. The choice of blades was less than ideal for what he had in mind, but soon decided that the spike designed for removing stones from horse hooves was the best bet.

Crouching down, the Time Lord slipped the metal spike into the lock. He wasn't sure if he could pick an illusionary lock, but maybe his belief he could could effect the Valeyard's belief that the door was locked? Or maybe he could pick the lock while steadfastly refusing to admit it existed?

The Doctor's thoughts were interrupted when a harsh noise filled the air behind him, a sinister crackling noise that was vaguely mechanical. The Doctor weighed his options and continued to attack the lock - whatever was happening was between him and the stairs so he had to work on his one possible escape route, the locked door. Normally he would have turned and introduced himself, but he had come to the sensible conclusion that there was nothing and noone in this micro-universe that was possibly friendly.

Something hard was pressed against the back of his skull as he realized the noise had cut out.

The Doctor carefully rose, and the object at his head stayed with him. Then, slowly, he turned around.

The Master stood behind him, one arm outstretched, his black gloved hand in mimicking the shape of a gun.

'I would have thought you would have killed me immediately,' the Doctor said at length, not noticing the tiny black disc adhering to the back of his collar.

The bearded renegade smiled knowlingly. 'There is no time for me to indulge in personal vendettas,' the Master said flatly. 'The High Council have resigned, Doctor, and thus their contract with the Valeyard has been revoked. Nevertheless, the new regime want you dead as well and are preparing a new contract.'

'Why don't you oblige them and become a local hero?' the Doctor jeered, pocketing his penkife. 'Or don't you want to spoil your anti-establishment image? Kill me before they release a contract and you have have your revenge and reputation at the same time!'

'It's too late. The Valeyard knows he has been betrayed. Should I kill you, he will sense it.'

The Doctor studied his enemy cautiously. 'He'll do more than that,' he pointed out, 'he'll die.'

'But not before he has opened the Time Vent and taken everything with him!' the Master snapped.

'The Time Vent?' the Doctor exclaimed. 'How did he gain control of the syphon of pure chaos that allows the peoples of the universe free will throughout the Web of Time?'

'He materialized his TARDIS inside the Matrix, around the Vent,' the Master explained.

'So he can open it at his liesure,' the Doctor sighed. He suddenly felt very tired. 'Seems he's thought of everything.'

'And only you can now get close enough to stop him,' the Master concluded. 'He can't kill you, but he can kill anyone else.'

The Doctor looked at the Master through hooded eyes. 'Then I'd better get a move on,' he said quietly.

The Master held out his hand for the Doctor to shake. The other Time Lord didn't move. The Master chuckled, his edges losing definition and beginning to blurr. 'Goodbye, Doctor,' he murmured, slowly beginning to fade away, leaving his smile like a Chesire Cat. 'And good luck.'

Then, once more, the Doctor was alone.

'Good luck?' the Doctor repeated, troubled. 'Makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing.' He took a deep breath. It seems destiny was ready for him even if he wasn't ready for it. It struck him he couldn't remember the last time he'd visited Earth, the last time he saw his friends, never really hanging around to say goodbye in his utter confidence he'd return soon enough.

He wasn't immortal, but like everyone else, he'd lived his life as if he was.

The Doctor turned his attention to the dark sky. 'Valeyard!' he called. 'I know you can hear me!'

The Doctor's voice cut through the tense silence that filled the control room. The Valeyard's hand was already closed around the handle that would open the hatchway in his TARDIS and end everything everywhere ever. Glitz looked up as the scanner cleared of the interference. The Doctor was standing at the entrance to the Fantasy Factory, staring directly up at them, as if he could see them.

'_I want to make a deal with you,_' the Doctor boomed.

Glitz licked his lips and looked up at the Valeyard desperately. The slender shape had not moved an inch, his hand still clamped around the opening handle. 'Go on,' he urged frantically, 'answer him!'

The Valeyard turned and looked down at him. The gloom of the control room rendered the Valeyard a solid shadow and Glitz could not make out his captor's expression. Then, the figure reached out with an another arm and tapped a control.

Glitz turned fearfully to see that that hatchway cover...

...had not moved at all.

A microphone extended out of the console and the Valeyard moved to speak into it.

The Doctor continued his talking into the night sky, knowing his patter might be the only thing stopping his darker side from triggering armageddon. 'The Master has just tod me that you might feel a little inclined to open the Time Vent!'

_So?_ was the Valeyard's monosyllabic reply.

'You don't really want to do that, do you?' the Doctor asked reasonably. 'Not when you've already won my remaining lives are yours? That'd be silly,' he admonished lightly, knowing that the fate of literally everything rested on him sounding if not convincing than _intriguing_...

The Doctor's casual chatting on the scanner had somehow calmed Glitz down to the point he was able to stand unaided. The gloom of the de-energized TARDIS no longer seemed so suffocating now the brightly coloured form of the Doctor was filling the scanner screen.

The Valeyard deactivated the mike. 'I don't trust him,' he whispered.

'That's a nice way to t a l k about yourself,' grunted the Andromedan.

The Valeyard reactivated the mike, and the scanner closed in on the Doctor's earnest features.

The Doctor tried to stay calm, relieving his tension by pacing up and down the balcony in front of the Fantasy Factory, lit by the dancing lights of the flashing neon sign. He was thinking of some other way to get a reaction from his current opponent - perhaps his _final_ opponent - when the familiar cut voice rolled out of the black foggy sky.

_The High Council did not permit it. The new regime never will._

The Doctor didn't look up. 'Then we'll make our _own_ deal!' he suggested cheerfully. 'Like before! I can sign over my lives to you, not some fictional alias, and no one will be able to stop us. Come on,' he cajoled pleasantly. 'Let me in!'

There was no reply.

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak when the door behind him creaked inwards, revealing a dirty orange gloom. It suddenly struck the Doctor that the Fantasy Factory may not have been an illusion, but a real physical object in the Matrix. Suddenly his recent runarounds in its depths made sense.

The door hung open, managing to look completely uninviting.

The Doctor took his time walking up to the door, peering inside, checking the doorframe, before he realized his delaying wasn't doing anything. Maybe he was just trying to buy himself a few extra moments of life, no matter how trivial they would be. Still, he wasn't about to let his understandable fear control him.

The Time Lord strode through the doorway, which swung shut behind him. Immediately, the courtyard, the kiln and the foggy, gas-lit alleyways surrounding it seeped away into nothing. The brick building sat in the void, in complete silence.

Mel took a step closer to the Keeper, who was slumped in the chair the Doctor had used while being tried. The key hung loosely from the hook his chest plate. One more step and she could snatch it and escape into the outer chamber before the guards could stop her.

Suddenly, the blank screen illuminated to show the Master surrounding by green and pink shapes. There was barely-contained excitement in his voice. '_We may yet win,_' he announced. '_The Valeyard has allowed the Doctor to enter his TARDIS!_'

The Keeper was suddenly wide awake and Mel drew away as the Inquisitor turned to face them. She hoped the judge had not noticed. 'Is the Doctor all right?' she asked before they could speak.

'_For the time being,_' the Master replied.

Mel suddenly realized that any minute, any second, the Time Vent could be opened and she would die instantly. Yet, oddly, she was more concerned about the only person she knew in this strange place. 'Can we see what's happening?'

'You can now,' the Master said, his image already bleeding into white as the screen was tuned to pick up the signals from the device he had planted on the Doctor earlier. 'Things are going precisely as intended,' the Master's voice could be heard as the dazzling white cube began to darken once more, sharpening to show a new image.

It showed a gloomy chamber not unlike the interior of the Doctor's time machine, Mel reflected. Standing by the console was a figure in a black hat and trenchcoat, and not far away stood Sabalom Glitz. As she watched the double doors at the end of the chamber whirred open to allow the bright shape of the Doctor to enter before closing again.

'Doctor?' she called hopefully.

'He won't be able to hear you,' the Inquisitor butted in, before returning her attention to the screen.

They might well be watching the end of history.

Stepping through the glazed and curtained door, the Doctor found himself standing in the sophisticated interior of a TARDIS and, judging by the decor and its ability to alter its external appearance, not his own. The chamber was half-lit, however, and no lights twinkled on the control console: the TARDIS was de-energized, all but shut down. That made sense - the automatic systems would immediately try to stem the flood of Erratic Time and, while there was no guarantee they'd work, the Valeyard obviously wasn't taking the chance.

The Valeyard, no longer wearing his court robes, stood by an archway that should have lead to the rest of the TARDIS but was filled by a heavy metal barrier inscribed with the Seal of Rassilon. The edges of the hatch were letting a scalding, disfiguring light seep into the control room and on the edge of his senses the Doctor could hear a creaking, clanking moan on the other side of the hatch. Erratic Time, longing to be free.

'I see that the Master was telling the truth,' he said as the exterior doors swung closed and locked themselves behind him. 'You've already blown the sealing bolts on the Time Vent.'

'Did he think I was bluffing?' asked the Valeyard, amused.

'No,' the Doctor replied, 'but _I_ hoped you were.'

'Forever sentimental,' the trenchcoat-clad figure snorted.

'Not this time,' said the Doctor with equal coldness in his voice. 'You want to destroy everything?' he challenged. He waved his hand dismissively.

'Go ahead.'


	6. SeventyTwo Seconds

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter 6: _Seventy-Two Seconds_

The Valeyard did not move or react to the offer, but continued staring at the Doctor.

Glitz swallowed noisily. 'Do you think it wise to provoke psychotic sociopaths to extremes of violence?' he croaked, terror constricting his throat.

'You overestimate him,' the Doctor told Glitz, not taking his eyes from the Valeyard. 'He's just a pathetic old man.'

'And you are a liar,' the Valeyard replied calmly. 'Or did you really intend to surrender your lives to me?'

'Not for an atto-second,' the Doctor confirmed grimly.

'So, you too are afraid of death?' the Valeyard asked.

'Who isn't? Nothing to be ashamed of,' the Doctor shrugged.

'Nothing?' the Valeyard echoed.

'Except for what you do to prevent it,' the Doctor replied. 'I am not going to let you have my remaining regenerations. Ever. So, now you can go ahead and destroy everything. After all, isn't that what you want?'

'It's not what I want,' Glitz wailed. 'Do you know what you're doing, Doc!'

The Time Lord wasn't listening, just staring across at his future self. 'However did I develop into such a pathetic individual?' he murmured. 'You've allowed the High Council, of all people, to manipulate you from beginning to end! You even connived in their pathetic endeavours to cover up the near destruction of Earth - supposedly your favourite planet! You've destroyed the credability of the Matrix , along with whatever was left of the Time Lord's reputation. And for what? So that you may extend your miserable life.'

The Doctor strode across the gloomy chamber towards the Valeyard, who backed away from him, into the control console. Even Glitz could understand the problem - the Valeyard could not harm the Doctor for fear of cancelling out his own existence, but the Doctor could harm the Valeyard, as long as he didn't mind depriving himself of a future. And judging by the dark look on the Time Lord's cherubic features, he didn't.

'Keep back!' the Valeyard shouted.

The Doctor continued remorselessly. 'You don't _deserve_ to live!' he growled, raising his hands to grab at the Valeyard's arms.

A look of blind panic crossed the future Doctor's pale face, then he turned, grabbed the handle on the console and wrenched it hard out from the desk. Glitz barely registered what this meant when the hatchway opened, an iris expanding in one violent movement to reveal a blinding, scalding whiteness that flooded into the control room, bleaching eveything inside it. The tortured growling of the light were louder, almost deafening, the primeval roar of Pandora's Box being opened.

Glitz dived for the exit doors but the TARDIS around him was already rocking and twisting like a planet hopper in an asteroid storm. The floor dipped and rose unpredictably and Glitz crumpled onto the polished floor next to the roundeled wall. He felt groggy, as though the raging whiteness was pushing at the edges of the time machine, bulging outwards, trying to break free...

And then Glitz just couldn't think any more. For a moment he saw himself riding through the twelve galaxies, Dibber and the Nosferatu, conning and nicking and killing and maiming... his entire, unhappy life torn to shreds and then hurled at him in no particular order. Then he saw himself as a normal, law-abiding technician on Salostaphos, the product of a normal childhood, who'd never carried a gun. Then himself as a hardened, mass-murderer being executed for his crimes. Then as an old man dying alone and lost in an escape pod. So many possibilities, he couldn't concentrate, and he slipped into catatonia to avoid the enslaught as it grew worse and worse.

The Doctor suffered worse. Glitz had only one life of possible realities to torment him, the Doctor had thirteen. He saw his old selves making different decisions, he saw future selves haunted by his actions at this moment. He saw himself muddle through on Thoros Alpha and save everyone, and then he saw the Valeyard gripping the control console as the Eccentric Time flowed around and through him.

How many seconds had passed, the Doctor wondered. He remembered some ancient school lesson that the universe could assimilate and repair damage done by Eccentric Time, as long as the exposure to it was less than seventy seconds. Or maybe more. And then it would all end.

Because of the Valeyard. Because of him.

The Doctor was damned either way.

Fifteen seconds.

A tremor ran through the trial room as Eccentric Time seeped through the plasmic shell of the Valeyard's TARDIS and swept through the Matrix and out into the space station that was linked to it. The distant, howling moans could already be heard. Mel gripped a pillar as she felt a sudden baffling wave of deja vu.

The Inquisitor and the others were staring straight up at the Matrix screen as the picture flared and tumbled. The Doctor was lurching his way through the pestilential light towards the dark shape of the Valeyard. Ten seconds had already passed, and already the Eccentric Time was spilling out into reality, twisting it, _changing_ it...

'What has he done?' the Inquisitor croaked as she felt her lives swirl before her senses.

Twenty-one seconds.

The roar from the Time Vent was louder, the glare brighter, and the control room was distorted like a carnival mirror, its hard lines now curves that flapped like spider's threads in a hurricane. The Doctor's right hand gripped the edge of the console, wondering if he could reactivate the TARDIS defenses - assuming they were not already riddled with Eccentric Time.

Thirty-two seconds.

The floor seemed to be tilting first one way then the other, bouncing lightly against the Doctor's shoes. He fought off the sight of a little man with an umbrella, and focussed on the black-clad figure gripping onto the console for dear life. If he was going to die, the Doctor would have some control over it.

Thirty-seven seconds.

The room titled so the raging Time Vent was at the bottom of the room, and the Doctor leapt forward, swinging out his arm to strike the Valeyard's chest as he fell. The impact jolted the other Time Lord free from the control panel. The trenchcoat-clad figure reeled backward, trying to regain his balance as the Doctor locked both arms around his shoulders.

Forty-two seconds.

The Valeyard flexed his muscles, twisting against the weight of the Doctor. The room had tilted again and, though still steep, the Valeyard was able to regain his balance. The Doctor hurled every ounce of weight against his enemy, and they skidded on the floor, closer to the gaping mouth of the Vent. The Time Lord swayed for a moment, unable to plot out the countless unrealized realities dancing around them like butterflies. So many possibilites. Too many to understand, let alone count.

Forty-five seconds.

The Doctor managed to clear his head. They were at the edge of the floor, beyond which was the scalding white potential of the Time Vent. The Valeyard redoubled his efforts to be free, and it took all the Doctor's not inconsiderable strength to keep him in place. Finally, the Valeyard relaxed slightly, and in that single moment the Doctor had the upper hand.

He took it.

Fifty-one seconds.

Mel felt very lightheaded, unsure what was happening. The Time Lords too seemed distracted. Mel could see her life unfolding, and then curling back, see herself living other lives, other Mels in other places and times. For brief, sickening moments she would claw her way back to the court room and see it trembling in some earthquake, lit by a ghastly white light.

And, on the screen, the Doctor and the Valeyard were struggling and wrestling in front of a trapesium of burning whiteness. Then, suddenly, the tangled silhouette tumbled into the glow and began to fall. A split second later the shadow was burnt up in the glare. The screen was a window of white.

'No!' she screamed unhappily, before suddenly being lost in the myriad reflections of her past.

The old Keeper of the Matrix peered up at the screen, fighting to stop the Eccentric Time from consuming his thoughts and history and rearranging them at random until he no longer existed. 'That wasn't an accident!' he raged over the vortex howls.

'What does it matter now?' the Inquisitor shouted at him. 'Nothing can be done now!'

Fifty-eight seconds.

And so they fell, linked by their tangle of limbs, into the depths of the Time Vent. The scorching white funnel of the Vent was lined by a surging froth of Eccentric Time, flowing upwards from the primeval cauldron of time and space. Despite the endless outrush of energies, the two shapes continued to plummet down the spiralling Vent.

Mindless, endless freefall.

Sixty-one seconds.


	7. The End

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter 7: _The End_

'_Glitz!_'

The familiar voice was the first thing in aeons Glitz had heard that wasn't the unholy moan of what lay inside the Time Vent. Already more possibilities were splintering away inside his mind, and he saw many of them showed him dumped in the corner of a distorted TARDIS control room as a bearded face filled the malfunctioning scanner screen.

'_There's very little time!_' the face was shouting. '_There's only ten seconds left!_'

The possible presents were being shunted aside for possible futures. The face, which Glitz distantly realized could be the Master, was speaking again. He narrowed his concentration and with a painful jolt he was suddenly stuck in the Valeyard's dying TARDIS as the Time Vent vomited chaos into history. It was a wonder he was still alive. Where were the Doctor and the Valeyard, anyway?

'_You must close the Time Vent!_' the Master was shouting over the scanner.

Glitz looked around in a daze. He felt as though he was about to pass out for good, as if his existence depend on a tiny, almost invisible thread worn down to breaking point. 'What?' he croaked.

'_Close the Vent hatch!_' the Master screamed, thought Glitz wasn't sure his ally had heard him.

How? wondered Glitz, but somehow found the strength to get to his feet on the shaking floor. Distantly, a deep bell had begun to chime. Everything was about to die. What to do, what to do... Glitz's eyes fell onto the control panel. If pressing the button and pulling the lever had unsealed and opened the hatch, would pushing the lever and depressing the button close and seal it?

It was the only option he had. If he failed the universe ended, but if he didn't try it certainly would.

Glitz slammed the lever back into place.

The segments of the hatch slid proud of the entrance, extending outwards to close the iris. The light grew more intense, the buffeting more violent as if Eccentric Time was raging at having its freedom so abruptly ended. With visible effort, the hatch slid shut, the Seal of Rassilon broken into six by the crackling energy seeping through the seams. Glitz pressed the button and with a harsh, electric rasp, the hatch was sealed once more. The Time Vent was closed.

Sabalom Glitz had just saved the entire universe.

Suddenly, the general feeling of exhaustion he'd suffered since the Vent was opened rapidly grew worse. Glitz felt very cold and was distantly aware of crashing, face down onto the console. He couldn't die after that... he'd saved the universe... hadn't even... got... a drink...

Something hot and bright exploded next to his ear.

Glitz flinched away, finding some vestige of strength to haul himself away from the console. Controls were exploding, sparks vomiting across the panel as dials and gagues popped and the panelling burnt. The white glare was draining from the walls, returning the control room to its gloom. But there was now a building noise, like a wind storm, or divine creatures wailing angrilly.

'What's happening now?' Glitz croaked as the TARDIS trembled around him.

The image of the Master was jumping and splitting. The myriad patterns behind him spluttered and died away. '_The Valeyard's illusion is breaking up now he can no longer maintain it!_' the renegade observed, voice beginning to distort. '_If you want to live, my dear Glitz, I suggest you leave the Matrix now!_'

'But I don't know the way!' Glitz wailed, feeling ever so tired.

'_Then stay here and die!_' the Master snarled, before a chunk of the control console exploded and the scanner hologram turned to static before blinking out of existence. The glass partitions behind where the scanner had been splintered as the circuits behind overloaded.

Glitz looked around in horror as another series of explosions tore across the control console. If more damage was gone he'd be sealed in this TARDIS forever! Glitz peered at the undamaged patch of the control panels and spotted the red-handled square the Valeyard had used to let the Doctor in.

Andromedan adrenaline leant Glitz the strength and speed to haul the square out of the console on its extendable aerial. The whirr of the door servo mechanism began immediately, but spluttered and began to run down. Glitz turned to see the double doors swinging open. One remained open while the other began to jerk closed and open spasmodically.

Glitz sprinted through the narrow gap.

Behind him, the control console was consumed in one coiling explosion of fire and smoke which billowed out to fill the distorted chamber.

Mel stared up at the screen. It showed a square of almost perfect white, with a small grey shape tumbling end over end, never quite disappearing off the screen. She'd ignored the strange illusions and exhaustion she had felt, staring at the whiteness until her eyes hurt. That'd explain why she was weeping over a man she barely knew. A man who had sacrificed himself for everything.

Around her, there was some cheer and jubilation. The Time Lords were muttering with relief, and the Keeper was worst of all, suddenly obsessed with how dangerous the situation had been now that they were safe. 'He only just closed the Vent in time,' he said yet again. 'A few more seconds and, well I dread to think about it, I really do.'

'What will happen to Sabalom Glitz now?' asked the Iquisitor - now the crisis had passed, she was recovering her composure, and quietly planning how to switch her allegiance to the new regime without the old one conspiring to execute her. She knew about the Ravalox operation as much as the Valeyard did and despite her apparently random appointment, she had been chosen specifically to ensure the Doctor achieved a fair trial, albeit one with a foregone conclusion.

'Without the Valeyard's mind to support it,' the Keeper mused, 'the mindscape he created will fold in on itself in a data purge. Anyone in the scape when that happens will die.'

The Inquisitor nodded, satisfied. 'Once the Matrix is purged, it must be secured completely - to both outsiders and Time Lords. We cannot risk such another occurence.'

The Keeper nodded quickly. With luck, his negligence in Matrix security would have to be ignored if the reputation of the computer net was to be maintained. Otherwise he would be replaced. Or worse.

Mel listened to the Time Lords, not taking her eyes from the screen. The Doctor's fury had not been misplaced - his people were totally corrupt. She no longer particularly cared.

On the screen, she had lost track of the grey speck.

Glitz was caught in madness. As he had hurled himself out of the TARDIS he had found himself on the balcony overlooking the courtyard of the Fantasy Factory. But the fog was swirling faster than a sand storm, and the disembodied singing voices were an incomprehensible jangle of noise. When a barrell of rainwater had exploded, flooding the yard and washing around a statue of Queen Victoria he was sure had not been there before, Glitz considered retreating inside the Factory.

When something in the water had started screaming, he stopped considering and did just that.

But instead of a disintegrating TARDIS control room, he found himself facing an endless corridor composed of identical offices, each containing a Mr. Popplewick. The Junior, the Senior, one in a monk's robe, one dressed like the Valeyard in court, another in Victorian bathing attire... each one was chanting 'You are contravening all established procedure!' over and over again.

Glitz had spotted the door to the Waiting Room and dived inside. Like the Doctor before him, Glitz was suddenly on a windswept, muddy beach. But the ground was bubbling quicksand pierced by mindlessly flailing hands which Glitz avoided and ran up the dunes. The sea was crashing and in the distance a lighthouse on the shore crackled with energy as its lamp spun faster and faster.

Glitz sprinted as fast as he could over the hillocks, scattering pebbles, but the exposure to Eccentric Time had exhausted him - and he wasn't that fit to start with. When he realized the sea had turned into coiling, choking steam, he'd thought it really was the end.

Then he'd seen, just in front of him, a dilapidated shack dwelling stained with tar. Friendly light bled through the windows and open doorway, mingling with the stining sea fog. Glitz managed to hurl himself through the doorway of the hut, and collapsed onto the floor.

The floor was polished ebony, and behind him was a familiar whirr that silenced the crashing of the waves and the hissing of steam. A mechanical hum gently throbbed the air around him. Glitz couldn't find the strength to move and just lay there as the hum deepened.

'Welcome Sabalom Glitz,' said a warm voice.

Glitz knew it was the Master. 'You...' He let out a hacking cough. 'You rescued me...'

'How could I not reward the one responsible for the Doctor's death?' the Master asked idly.

Glitz had recovered just enough to lift his head. He was in the Master's TARDIS, a less sophisticated version than the Valeyard's, with the walls, ceiling and floor all matt black. Even the grey control console was outlined in black, but the bright light from the roundels made the control chamber far more welcoming than the bridge of the Valeyard's ship had been.

'I would have thought you'd... kill me...' Glitz croaked. 'If I'd croaked that fair-haired personage.'

The Master was staring into space. 'He did it himself. No one else could have succeeded,' he mused softly, before adjusting some settings on the console. 'We're out of the Matrix now. The Valeyard's illusion has cancelled itself out. We are free.'

Glitz was surprised to realize he was feeling better. The complete exhaustion he'd felt was reducing to a bearable ache. 'It's time for me to retire,' he decided. Seeing all those possible Glitzes had unnerved him, especially that lonely old crook dying in hiding. He hated the concept of dying at all, but to be honest, he preferred following the Doctor into oblivion that wasting away in misery. Yes, he'd decided. The idea of helping the Master with the money side of conquering known space had definitely lost its appeal.

Not to the Master, though, who was smiling a shark-like smile. 'You've hardly begun,' he chuckled. 'With the

Doctor out of the way - the universe is ours!' he crowed. For some reason, the thought did not send adrenaline pumping through his veins as it once had.

Glitz got to his feet unsteadily. 'I'll tell you what?' he offered breathlessly. 'You can have my half as well.'

The Master blinked. He'd intended to anyway, but was touched to be offered it. 'Thank you,' he said, slightly taken aback. 'I accept,' he said with his old steel.

'Good,' Glitz nodded. 'Cause all I wanna do is go home.'

The Master laughed mockingly and punched a sequence into the controls. The time rotor ceased its rise and fall and the console let out a chime. The black screen covering the scanner rolled back to reveal a short corridor made of marble. A blue police box and two empty transport caskets sat near a flight of steps to the court room. 'Return your casket, the Time Lords will return you home.'

Glitz nodded as the Master opened the exterior doors for him to leave. 'I suggest you leave Gallifreyan territory as soon as possible,' he advised, returning to the controls. 'It shall rapidly become a dangerous place to be. Farewell, Glitz. Forever!'

The Andromedan stepped through the doorway which he idly noticed was in a fluted Corinthian column which the Master enjoyed setting his TARDIS to be. The missing segment of fluted stone slid back into place and moments later, with a wheezing groaning sound, the pillar had faded from sight. Behind it, the entrance to the Matrix quietly sealed itself shut.

Glitz walked over to the capsule he'd arrived in, tempted to lift the lid and clamber inside - at least there he'd find somewhere to rest and get his strength back. He looked up at the lonely blue box. The Doctor would never come back for his disguise time machine. It'd probably just gather dust until some Time Lord noticed it and put it in a museum of primitive transport. The TARDIS wouldn't move again.

Besides, what was the point? Without the Doctor to be taken throughout the cosmos to sort things out, the TARDIS wasn't needed. The universe was going to have to look after itself from now on, and it was in a bad enough state without the Master planning to take over. Hell, there wouldn't even be a universe if he, Sabalom Glitz, hadn't saved the day, doing the sort of thing the Doctor did. The Doctor would probably have done it himself if he wasn't too busy dying at the time.

Glitz stroked the tattered paintwork of the blue box. He liked the colour. Maybe the Time Lords would let him have it as a souvenier? No, they wouldn't. And what could he do with a time machine that the Time Lords wouldn't immediately erase him from history for? Still, if the Master did take over Gallifrey, he might be understanding... But that left the question of what Glitz wanted the TARDIS _for_. The casket at his feet was more than enough to take him home to the _Nosferatu _and Dibber.

It struck him he didn't feel particularly inclined to go back.

He'd saved the universe. And he'd done it for the universe, he realized. At the time, not a single thought for himself had entered his head - though, admittedly, the Eccentric Time had given him enough thoughts about himself to last a life time. He'd saved the universe because it was the right thing to do, not because he happened to be in it. It felt odd. Maybe sort of good.

Sabalom Glitz had saved the universe! The ultimate philanthropist - he hadn't made a grotzi, no one else knew or cared, he'd even gone so far as to turn down a partnership with the Master... And he felt good about that? Was that feeling what drove the Doctor to wander the cosmos keeping other people safe?

Glitz looked back at the TARDIS.

Thinking.

Mel was sick of the Time Lords, their hypocracy, and staring at the screen in the hope for seeing her friend. She didn't want to know that opening a hatch could wipe out the universe, or that a bunch of squabbling pensioners were happy to wipe out humanity to stop people hacking into their computer. She just wanted to go home and forget all about this.

Rubbing her red eyes, she got to her feet. The Time Lords were already heading for the other exit, the red-clad guards following. The Inquisitor and the Keeper had been talking in whispers for several minutes. Sick of it, Mel butted in. 'If it's not too much trouble, I would like to be returned to my own planet and time,' she said loudly and firmly.

The Inquisitor glanced at her. 'Of course,' she said, mentally deciding to have the human's memory of events on the station wiped from her memory. Letting a human return to 1980s Earth knowing the darkest secrets of the Time Lord was entirely out of the question.

'Before I go, can I have one last look in the Doctor's TARDIS?' Mel asked.

The Keeper blinked. 'Why do you ask?'

'I've always wanted to see inside it,' Mel said. When she had first met the Doctor and Peri, she had not had the chance to see inside the Doctor's fabulous, bigger-on-the-inside time machine and spaceship. 'I'll never get a chance to know, will I?'

The Keeper sighed. He rather admiring the little redhaired human. 'I'm sure that can be made possible, just a brief visit.' He glanced meaningfully at the Inquisitor. 'It's the least we can do for the Doctor's companion, is it not?' he remarked.

The Inquisitor didn't particularly care. It would keep Mel out of the way while reparations were made. She glanced up at a Chancellery Guard. 'Allow this woman access to the Doctor's TARDIS and prepare to return her to her point of origin.'

The guard nodded and crossed the courtroom.

'I shall miss the Doctor very much,' said Mel, deciding to play extra-vulnerable. She didn't trust the white-clad Time Lady an inch.

'I'm sure we all will,' the Keeper said warmly. 'Won't we?'

'What?' the Inquisitor muttered. 'Oh, yes of course.'

'Will you ever be able to retrieve his body?' she asked.

The Keeper shook his head firmly. 'I shouldn't think so, we can't risk re-opening the Time Vent. If they wish to escape the syphon, it will have to be through their own ingenuity, I'm afraid.'

Mel's jaw dropped and she looked up at the screen of the tiny grey shape. 'The Doctor is still alive?' she gasped. She'd assumed they'd been killed the moment they'd fallen into the Time Vent.

The Inquisitor almost smiled. 'Of course, young woman! They both are - for the moment. Only Time Lords could survive freefall in the time nexus for any period of time.'

Mel found her eyes drawn back to the screen. 'I... I didn't know,' she said, helplessly. Her expression darkened. 'And you're going to leave him there?'

'It would take far more than seventy two seconds to mount a rescue,' the Keeper said reprovingly. 'The Doctor would not thank us for devastating time and space on such a vain hope. Besides, the Doctor has a limited amount of time he can survive in the Vent.'

'By the time the Matrix is cleared, it will be too late,' the Inquisitor concluding, privately cheerful that this removed the awkwardness of sentencing the Doctor to death. 'I'm sorry,' she lied.

Mel grimaced. 'But, but, he might manage to escape before his time runs out!'

The Keeper nodded. 'It is a possibility, but it will be far from easy.'

Mel shook her head. 'He'll succeed in getting out. I'm sure he will.'

The old Time Lord sighed. 'If he doesn't, the Time Vent will remain his prison for eternity,' he said bleakly.

The hatch to the Time Vent was closed. The Eccentric Time particles smashing against the inside of the hatch bounced off and the energy backwash began, surging down the syphon towards the two figures tumbling and falling through infinity.

The Doctor was now struggling to break free from his future self's iron grip. Not that there was any reason to, but it was the closest he could have to entertainment before the end. When the backwash engulfed them, their personal history would be torn to shreds again and again until they literally faded out of existence altogether. There was nothing he could do.

But it was worth it. The hatch had closed, maybe in time. The universe was probably safe.

And caught in this impossible situation, he would at least be spared the destiny of becoming a bitter old man so terrified of death he'd sacrifice everything he'd believe in. The Doctor felt the first drops of the energy wave reaching them, and wished he'd saved Peri. Over nine hundred years and that was the only regret he could think of. Something to be proud of, he supposed.

The wave reached them and the Doctor and the Valeyard began to die.


	8. The Beginning

_**Trial's End**_

by Ewen Campion-Clarke

based on a script by Eric Saward

Chapter 8: _The Beginning_

Glitz was hiding in the casket as Mel was escorted up to the Doctor's TARDIS by a Time Lord guard who unlocked the door. 'Thank you,' said Mel warmly with a smile, and stepped through the doors. The guard turned and returned to the Trial room. The Inquisitor was by the doorway and they began to speak.

Glitz, Time Travelling Do-Gooder. It was an idea that would have sickened him in his youth, but not many people got the chance to see every possibility their life could have taken. The very idea of him cheating destiny appealed to him enough to do it. And at the back of it all was a strange sense of loss.

Someone had to take the Doctor's place, that was for sure.

And Glitz could do that. He'd already proved his credentials as a philanthropist capable of saving the universe from evil. And if said philanthropist can make a few grozits along the way, then he'd surely have more to be philanthropic _with_, right? Plus, with the knowledge the Time Lords were on his back, well, it would help keep him in line. If he relaxed too much he had visions of using the TARDIS to fix casinos and monopolize TV stations with genuine archive footage. Well, maybe if he was careful...

He just had to wait for Mel to emerge, dive inside and he was off.

The sight of the Valeyard's TARDIS on the screen had meant that Mel wasn't totally surprised upon entering the police box. Peri's description had taken off some more shock, but the bigger-on-the-inside stuff was not to be underestimated.

The control room was simpler than the Valeyard's, and friendlier with a few items of furniture scattered around the place: a wicker chair, a white hatstand, a chaise longue. The hum in the background was pleasantly threadbare, and Mel could just imagine seeing the Doctor in that bizarre outfit, brooding over the controls of his time machine.

She shook her head.

Why was she so upset over the fate of a man she had known for a few days?

What was so special about the Doctor?

And why was there a manilla envelope sitting on the control panel in front of her with the words _For The Attention Of Melanie Jane Bush _in copperplate handwriting?

Mel put down the TARDIS key she'd palmed from the police box door's lock on the control panel. Carefully she picked up the envelope and tore it open with her thumb. Who could have known she was going to enter the TARDIS? No one had apparently been near it before her bar the Doctor, and he had had no idea she was about to arrive at court.

She found a thick wadge of papers, all covered in the same handwriting. The first words were _Dear Melanie_.

Mel began to read with ever-mounting surprise.

Glitz eased the casket open and rose to his feet. The other Time Lords had left and the guard had his back turned. He noticed that Mel had taken the TARDIS key, so the first thing to do was get it off her. He frowned. Staring his career as a Doctor substitute by mugging an innocent woman, what was he thinking? Still, the Doctor had used force when necessary. But half the time he didn't need to, just talked his way out of trouble. So, that's what he'd do. Duck inside, explain the situation to Mel, and she would be bound to help. He'd be happy to give her a lift home - during his association with the Master he'd gathered a basic working knowledge of TARDISes. Stop, start, and setting a specific course were easy enough, and as long as nothing more complicated was needed...

The guard wasn't looking.

Glitz slipped around the corner of the police box and into the time machine.

_His_ time machine.

Mel had finished reading the first page, and still wasn't sure of what to do now. She needed time to think, and with that guard outside under orders to take her home immediately, she'd have to stay inside the TARDIS. Still, there should be enough room inside for a walk to let her collect her thoughts.

She crossed to the internal door. It opened easily onto a corridor, the walls marked with roundels, branching off in several directions. Could the TARDIS really be that big? she wondered. A quick exploration, she decided. In light of her letter, that would be a good idea.

As Mel slipped through the doorway, closing the panel behind her, Glitz sidled into the control room.

It was the first time he'd seen the inside of the Doctor's TARDIS. It was identical to the Master's, except it was a friendly off-white colour and there was some furniture. It was a place people lived and enjoyed themselves, not a bland transporter like the Master used. Glitz rather liked it.

He crossed to the control console. The door control was similar to the ones used in the Master's and Valeyard's TARDIS. The doors whirred closed. Spotting the TARDIS key lying on the console, Glitz automatically pocketed it for further use. As he concentrated on the controls, he forgot all about Mel Bush.

'This would be a lot easier if those Time Lords would just put a red button on this control panel that says '_Push This_',' he sighed. He moved around the console looking for the displays he recognized. 'Probably ought to find out if the Time Lords have immobilized us or not. Hopefully they haven't. I wonder how I stop that, anyway...'

He found the panel for coordinate entry. Where to now? 'I'm not sure where I want to go,' he admitted. 'Let me think. Somewhere safe? Deep space. Obviously.' He tapped in the coordinates he knew for the space between the Island Galaxies and prayed the TARDIS would understand them. He crossed to the panel with the door control where the dematerialization lever sat.

'Here we go, 'Doctor',' said Glitz cautiously, and pushed the lever upwards.

To his complete and utter surprise, the time rotor illuminated and began to rise and fall. The hum deepened as the TARDIS began wending its way to the coordinates he had entered. And it was as the ship leveled out into full flight that Glitz remembered Mel.

The Chancellery Guard spun around, drawing his staser as the TARDIS began to dematerialize. Its lamp flashed furiously and after a few seconds it was nothing but a patch of blue light near the empty caskets. Then even that was gone. As the Guard wondered what to do, a hatch on the outer hull of the spacecraft opened light a flower, belching a beam of intense white light out into space. The spinning police box was hurtled up the beam and returned to normal time and space.

The wave washed over the two figures, eating at their links with reality. One of them stopped struggling and went still, then so did the other. Two lifeless shapes continued to fall, then the first withered and melted away into nothingness - leaving a gap, a vacuum that the remaining body could not fill. The disturbance warped, buckled and then vanished.

And then there was noone in the Time Vent.

Oxyvegyramosa was a verdant stellar fragment in the Apus Constellation. The twilight over the wooded hills was a pleasant purple, with tall reedy grass acting like a green see from which tall, mighty trees emerged heavy with lush foliage. A planet far off the oft-used space lanes, there was no contact between the primitive native life forms and the rest of the civilized universe.

The year, by Mel Bush's reckoning was 2489.

A strange seeping glow emerged from nowhere a few feet from a well-trod dirt track. The glow swirled and spun through the spectrum several times before dwindling and contorting into a humanoid shape, which suddenly dropped heavily into the grass, rolled onto its back and lay still. The energy coiled and receded from the body, leaving a patchwork, multicoloured coat, striped yellow trousers, and patterned waistcoat. A mop of pale blonde curls framed a tired, lined face.

A groan emerged from dry lips. 'Twas... a far... far better thing... I did... than... I have ever... done,' it croaked, each word a brittle gasp. 'It's a... far... far... better... rest... that I... go to... than I... have... ever...' A rattling sigh emerged from deep inside the figure's broad chest.

Silence.

The body lay in the grass for a long time, as the sun ducked below the horizon. Then, several hours into the night, a faint luminescence returned to the shape in the reeds. Minute after minute passed as the pale glow became thicker and stronger, causing the leaves and foliage to sway from the body.

The light flashed through the spectrum, the exposed skin of the body beginning to pulsate. A while after that, energy streamed out from the flesh, swirling around thebody, slowly but surely reshaping it. As the night continued the face tightened, the glowing white skin stretching back. As dawn approached, his skin peeled back to reveal brand new tissue underneath. Old flesh melted into the new. Hair receded, straitening. The out-rush of energy ceased. The light faded.

Dawn broke, light beginning to seep back into the glade, bathing the sprawled and still figure. The clothes sagged, loose and long over a shorter, smaller body. The ash blonde curls had been replaced by short, dark, feathery hair. Bar the fact it contained a nose, a mouth and two eyes, the face was completely different.

The sun warmed the cold body for a long time before the eyes popped open, bright and shining with life.

'Ah! That was a nice nap!' the new voice announced, lighter and rougher in tone than the old one. The man in the clothes leapt up onto his feet, slapping his hands together to gather attention. 'Now, down to business - I'm a little worried about the temporal flicker in Sector 13, there's a bicentennial refit of the TARDIS to book in, must just pop over to Centauri Seven, and then, perhaps, a short holdiay.'

The man fought his way through the grass onto the track, absently hoisting up his loose belt to stop his trousers gathering around his knees. 'Right. That's all very clear. Just three small points.' A slightly troubled expression crossed the new face. 'Where am I? When am I? And, very importantly, who am I?'

As he brooded over this conundrum, the figure absently began to stroll down the hillock, unaware that eyes were watching him. Four of them, in fact, and all belonging to the same being. It too was a stranger to this planet, but had not arrived so haphazardly. It could have, if it was inclined, told the new arrival that he was in Oxyvegyramosa in 2489.

But none of the natives called it that of course.

They preferred the name 'Lakertya'.

_To Be Continued..._


End file.
